I listened to this wondrous story by New Jersey* writer Junot Diaz on the New Yorker Podcast today. It is short and tells of the bewildering jungle that is adolescence, ethnic mix-ups, attempts to impress and seduce girls, keeping cool all the while, trying to guess how far you can go, the supportive role of the boys – and how, sometimes, things may not quite turn out as you expected
.
I laughed. I chuckled. I cringed.
I decided it would make a great story for class some day.
* Having been very impressed myself with the industrial-strength sunsets over Jersey City, I just loved the story narrator’s suggestion to show such a sunset (“one of the wonders of the world”) off to his brown/black/white/halfie date with the words:
“That’s nice, right?”
This is by far the most popular post on this blog! To all the people flocking here via Google, I’d be really interested to hear about your personal interest in this story. Do stop to leave a comment, please.
Comment by mrs. h. — December 5, 2007 @ 12:44 pm |
[...] Why are short stories almost always so damn depressing? (I know two exceptions: How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl or Halfie) and Salman Rushdie’s Good Advice is Rarer than [...]
Pingback by Celebrity Guest Poster: Mr Tulgey Wood « never enough homework — April 21, 2008 @ 11:02 pm |
[...] short story collection Drown – after months and months in which my post on the audio version of How to date a browngirl (blackgirl, whitegirl or halfie) was consistently the top post on this blog, I felt I owed a debt to Mr Diaz. Even if I don’t [...]
Pingback by Junot Diaz: Boyfriend « never enough homework — May 2, 2008 @ 10:29 pm |
Well from a fellow halfie, it was funny and true.
Comment by Halfie — January 31, 2009 @ 10:02 am |
I came across the blog researching the short story. I’m writing a paper on it from the sociological view of dramaturgical analysis.
Comment by Veronica — May 17, 2009 @ 9:56 pm |
This is a bullshit story and puts down women everywhere. Junot must think he’s some kind of player, but he’s not at all!
Comment by Bernard Craw — November 3, 2009 @ 9:59 am |
Don’t you think it’s the narrator who inadvertently puts himself down? Of course he views women as conquests (but then, he’s just a teenager having to prove himself in a very macho world), but he doesn’t seem to be very successful. The title is very attention-grabbing and swaggering, of course, but I just think that makes the story funnier.
Comment by mrs. h. — November 3, 2009 @ 11:24 am |